


Boycaamat

by Anonymous



Category: Imperial Radch Series - Ann Leckie
Genre: Collection: Purimgifts Day 3, Political Action, Religious Persecution, set about 25 years into the annexation of Valskaay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:02:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22986805
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: How the Valskaayans attracted enough attention to get specific religious accommodations.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 22
Collections: Anonymous, Purimgifts 2020





	Boycaamat

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lea_hazel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lea_hazel/gifts).



Nothing changed, the day the boycott started. Six billion Valskaayans, on the planet and moons and oort cloud mining stations, went to work, shopped, prayed, and went about their lives. It took three days for the analysts to notice what was wrong—in those three days, less than five hundred babies had officially been born. The Valskaayan preliminary citizens weren’t having fewer children, or seeking less medical care, or even, the officials learned once hospitals started responding to urgent queries, giving birth less often. And yet, of the hundred thousand or so babies that _ought_ to have been born each day, barely a hundred had been granted birth certificates or registered in the Radchaai databases.

(Whether this registration was strictly necessary, given that I had already met all of the newborns in Surimto District and knew what most of their parents were planning to name them, was beside the point. Whatever was happening was big, it was coordinated, and it was _uncivilized_.)

The first word on _why_ came from a medium-sized station orbiting one of Valskaay’s gas giants, an administrator idly asked whether her assistant’s baby had been delivered yet.

“We’re waiting a week, actually,” the assistant said, “in case the boycott ends quickly.”

“Honored, if you’ll pardon me asking, _what_ boycott?”

The assistant’s explanation was muddled by a half-dozen word of mouth transmissions, but the gist was clear enough. She, and everyone who had talked to someone who had talked to someone who had heard about the new temples of Amaat in a half dozen planetary cities, were boycotting the priests. 

A more complete story was transmitted across the system a few hours later, courtesy of Vestris Cor’s oldest Valskaayan priest. 

She sat across the desk from Decade Commander Kau Ibtaam, keeping one nervous eye on my ancillaries. I very much did not want to shoot her, if it came to that. She had been generous with her library of recorded choral music, and, early in the annexation, had worked hard to keep children and noncombatants away from the fighting. Now, she ran her hands (politely gloved, though she preferred bare fingers) through her beard, “You made an announcement, last month, do you recall? That once the temple of Amaat opened, it would be the only place to legally get documents notarized?” Her Radchaai was accented, but articulate.

“Honored Teacher, I do recall that pronouncement,” Commander Kau had, in fact, argued against it, though mostly because she had several young cousins who would ship out to Valskaay in the next few months, and she hoped to find them assignments in a major city. “It was an order from the Lord of the Radch herself. She hopes that finally opening the temples will allow the military to decrease its presence here, as we continue the transition to civilian leadership.”

“And you’ll recall, of course, that I came here to protest when I first heard, on the grounds that the majority religion here is forbidden from entering the temple of another god?”

“Yes, Honored Teacher. We’ve been over this. Amaat _is_ your god, or so close it cannot possibly matter.”

I would not have particularly blamed the honored teacher, at this point, were she to physically attack Commander Kau. They had repeated that particular argument a dozen times a year since Kau had arrived in Vestris Cor, and yet Kau kept making it. Instead, she simply gave a forced smile, “Indeed. Perhaps she is, in which case we would be banned from entering by dint of the other gods worshipped there. We’ve accepted,” a bitter word, that, “your rule here, and those laws that don’t conflict with our own. But if we must recognize your pantheon to have documents notarized, perhaps documents do not need to be notarized.”

“What about births? Deaths? Clientage?”

“All things we handled on our own, before the annexation. Our analogue to clientage, of course.”

“Honored Teacher, this is _dangerous_. Perhaps a hundred years from now Valskaay will be stable for a protest like this, but you know how tenuous the situation still is in some places. People will be shot.”

“Commander Kau, you say that as if you won’t be the person shooting them.” She swallowed, “No person has done anything illegal, not even anything improper. Many parents do not register births until after their child has been named, or until all parents have time off from their assignments together to visit the nearest military outpost.”

“What will you do, if the Lord of the Radch orders you to use the temples of Amaat for your legal business?”

“I hope it does not come to that, commander.”

After the priest left, Commander Kau put her face in her hands, “One Esk, transmit that whole conversation to Anaander Mianaai?”

“She was already watching, commander.”

“Good. What are her orders?”

“Nothing so far.”

“Inform me when they arrive,” Commander Kau ordered. 

Orders had not arrived by the end of the day, nor the end of the week. The first Valskaayan to mention the boycott went to Medical and retrieved her newborn. Despite the fact that there was no priest of Amaat on that station yet, the child was not registered. People did get shot, but not many, given the circumstances. None were shot for boycotting under Kau’s command, not even by the more trigger-happy of her new cousin-lieutenants, an achievement for which Kau was perhaps overly proud.

Anaander Mianaai continued issuing orders on other topics, remaining conspicuously silent on the boycott. Weeks stretched into months, and months into years, before a single-sentence pronouncement went out to all priests of Amaat in the Valskaay system, “Any person claiming a conscientious objection may ratify contracts on the steps of a temple, so long as a qualified priest is present.”

It was not strictly necessary for parents to claim that their children, some as old as five years, had been born in the last week. Many hundreds of thousands did anyway, and drank to the confusion of future Radchaai historians.

**Author's Note:**

> Today's graphic is a very rough approximation of what the recorded birthrate on Valskaay looked like over the early years of the annexation. (Edit: the image is inexplicably not appearing for me so [here's a link](https://66.media.tumblr.com/28609d7e0d2b549be10d400f71599cde/30d24645c8bf967b-38/s540x810/035f27119fdda2baaef9575f16f46d770b0dc0ea.png)
> 
> Hope you enjoyed!


End file.
